[sdiy] Accordion-style controller

[Johannes Öberg]

R Drake: wrote about a MIDI concertina:

Interessting! However, it seems he had the very problem I'm trying to
avoid: that the switches have no travel. Accordion 'melody manual'
buttons have a very short travel to begin with, but they usually have
a very low resistance and therefor at least *some* travel is good.

John Luciano wrote about opto-interrupters:

I'll look into that, are they complete 'forks' where you just insert
something between the, uh, what do you call them? Fork-pins?

That method might provide a way to get 'pressure' sensitivity into the
keyboard. A real accordion tends to bend and distort the tone (like a
blues harmonica) when you hold the buttons very lightly.

OT: Come to think of it; why has the accordion keyboard never catched
on? In these synthetic days, there's no need for the piano keyboard,
and the accordion keyboard is simply a better idea. It's compact, so
you have a better reach, it's faster to play, and it is completely
symetrical so you can transpose to any key just by moving you hand.

I guess it's just "marketing"; the accordion being forever associated
with polka.

/J (I like polka)

On 2/12/07, rdrake <rdrake at data2action.com> wrote:
> Paul Everett has a DIY MIDI concertina project here:
>
> http://home.stny.rr.com/peverett/gadget.html
>
> pretty complete writeup, including his switch choice etc.
>
> bbob
>
>
> >----- ------- Original Message ------- -----
> >From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Johannes_=D6berg?="
> ><johannes.oberg at gmail.com>
> >To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> >Sent: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:26:52
> >
> >Hi list. I'm prospecting building a chromatic
> >button accordion
> >keyboard for MIDI. Does anybody have any
> >recommendations for switches?
> >It seems to me that the technically best idea would
> >be to build little
> >accordion levers that operate microswitches but
> >that feels like
> >overkill (and bloody difficult too!).
> >
> >So I guess I'm looking for SPST pushbuttons with
> >the right kind of
> >feel to them. If you have any ideas of a simple way
> >to make the above
> >solution (levers) instead, i'm all ears :-)
> >
> >/Johannes
>